Something happened at Poses last weekend that powerboat racing in Europe has not seen for a while.
People came.
A lot of them.
French families descended on a riverbank in Normandy to watch raceboats. The car parks filled. The food vendors didn’t stop working. And the church spire of the Église Saint-Quentin stood above it all, as it has above the Seine for centuries, watching something it had never quite seen before.
The 24 Heures Motonautiques de Normandie 2026 was the debut of a new event on a river that powerboat racing knows well, and it announced itself in terms no one had quite anticipated. The Powerboat News French-language preview article for the event broke the site’s record number of views by a distance.
But the number that mattered most was not on any screen. It was the one you could see in person: 10,000 spectators over three days, with many standing four deep on the far bank, watching Boat 2 go past in the dark with its navigation lights on and spray flying off the chop the wind had built through the afternoon. Michel Lenglet, president of organising club Rouen Inshore Racing, put it simply.
Lenglet told La Dépêche Louviers: “C’était noir de monde sur le chemin de halage le long de la berge rive gauche de la Seine.” It was black with people on the towpath along the left bank of the Seine.
The Night Comes Back
Race 1 was twelve hours, noon to midnight. Boats carrying navigation lights, racing in the dark on a French river, with the temperature dropping and a thunderstorm building to the north. It was the kind of racing that used to define the 24 Hours at Rouen and has been absent from the sport since the Rouen Yacht Club lost its right to the city’s waterway in August 2022. At Poses, it came back.
Not everyone in the field had raced at night before.
Adam Wrenkler of Monsnauteam, one of the younger Swedes in a crew that would go on to win Race 2 and take the overall vice-championship, had pushed to take a night stint. His inspiration was the Rouen 24 Hours he had watched on YouTube. What he found in the cockpit after dark was something he had not entirely anticipated.
It is a dream to do endurance during the night. I started at dusk, so I could get a feel for what lines to take. After that you just have to drive on rhythm and feeling. You can see absolutely nothing except lights and buoys.
His teammate Hilmer Wiberg, apparently less enthused, delegated his night shift without much persuasion. Wrenkler’s explanation was to the point: “He is scared of the dark — I had to step in!”
The Old Masters
Nelson Morin, Peter Morin and Thomas Cleret won the 2026 UIM S3 World Endurance Championship for Team Touax MRK Racing, taking Race 1 on Friday night and Race 3 on Sunday afternoon. Between them, the Morin family have forgotten more about endurance powerboat racing than most people in the sport will ever learn. Nelson is a multiple 24 Hours of Rouen winner. Peter is a seven-time S3 world champion who also competes in UIM F1H2O and UIM F2 each season.
Winning at Poses meant more to Peter Morin than another entry in a trophy cabinet that has run out of shelf space. In the two previous editions of the 24 Hours at Rouen, the family raced under Red Star colours and led both races. They lost both in the closing stages. That history was sitting in the background all weekend.
It was a long time that we wanted to race more in the night. The last two editions of the 24 Hours were very unlucky. We were leading two times and missed the victory. It was a very good adventure but very sad, finally.
On Saturday, with Monsnauteam leading Race 2 and second place mathematically optimal for the championship, the calculation was precise and the execution was exact. Touax held second. The night race was already won. The title would follow on Sunday. It did.
The Generation Behind Them
The most interesting thing about the 2026 S3 World Endurance Championship was not who won it. It was who pushed them all the way. Monsnauteam’s Belgian-Swedish crew finished as vice-champions, winning Race 2 outright and leading Race 3 for more than an hour before a fuel shortage handed the lead back. Hilmer Wiberg is one of the most decorated young drivers in European powerboat racing, a three-time world champion in junior categories who spent his first F2 season running the world title to the final race before a mechanical failure ended his campaign. Adam Wrenkler finished third in the UIM F4 World Championship last season. These are not passengers in a fast boat. They are the drivers that the Morin generation will be watching carefully over the next few years.
Elsewhere in the field, Niklāvs Rimeicāns of Akvashelf Racing, who had never raced at night before this weekend, was taking mental notes. His team, which included Nida Kilinskaite — the only female driver in the field — finished fourth in the overall championship. Paulius Stainys, his Lithuanian teammate, spoke about the Saturday course with the enthusiasm of someone who had found a format that suited him. Team Torpilleur Racing’s consistent Pierre Lambert, Romain Nedelec and Alexandre Jean took third in the championship with three podium finishes across three races.
Even Jeremy Brisset, who capsized while leading in the second hour of Race 1 and walked away uninjured, left a calling card. His GSET by MRC crew set the fastest lap of the entire twelve-hour race: a 1:01.95 at 126.857 km/h. The boat that flipped while leading did the quickest lap of the day. That is endurance racing.
What Poses Proved
The 24 Heures Motonautiques de Normandie is not a replacement for the 24 Hours of Rouen. It is something new on a river that both events share.
The format, three heats across three days with night racing built into the first, is different from what Rouen offered. The venue is different. The organisation behind it is different.
But the crowds who enjoyed those three days of action on the water were not thinking about any of that.
Neither were Chris Davies and I who covered the event.
We were just watching the racing, which is the point.
Full results and coverage from all three rounds at the 24 Heures Motonautiques de Normandie 2026 hub.
John Moore is the editor of Powerboat News, an independent investigative journalism platform recognised by Google News and documented on Grokipedia for comprehensive powerboat racing coverage.
His involvement in powerboat racing began in 1981 when he competed in his first offshore powerboat race. After a career as a Financial Futures broker in the City of London, specialising in UK interest rate markets, he became actively involved in event organisation and powerboat racing journalism.
He served as Event Director for the Cowes–Torquay–Cowes races between 2010 and 2013. In 2016, he launched Powerboat Racing World, a digital platform providing global powerboat racing news and insights. The following year, he co-founded UKOPRA, helping to rejuvenate offshore racing in the United Kingdom. He sold Powerboat Racing World in late 2021 and remained actively involved with UKOPRA until 2025.
In September 2025, he established Powerboat News, returning to independent journalism with a focus on neutral and comprehensive coverage of the sport.
